The development of enterprise architectures (EAs) in the Federal Government is becoming increasingly important. Most government agencies are motivated to build EA because of various legislative actions and directives over the past several years. The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 required executive branch agencies to maintain information technology (IT) architectures. OMB Circular A-130 provided the corresponding implementation guidance. In February 2002, a study by General Accounting Office (GAO) found that “only 5 agencies reported satisfying the practices that GAO believes are needed to effectively manage enterprise architecture activities.” Thus, the Federal Government is pressured to ensure each agency possesses an EA.
Given the increasing business emphasis on EA in the Federal Government, it is increasing desirable to deliver architectural products in the form of a dynamically updatable tool set. In other words, different software products used by the Federal Government should be able to dynamically exchange and update data.
An enterprise development tool developed by TELELOGIC SOFTWARE®, known as TELELOGIC®'s SYSTEM ARCHITECT® (SA), is widely used in the Federal Government, such as the United States Air Force. SA is designed to provide all of the tools necessary for development of enterprise systems. SA has the ability to perform structured analysis and design, data modeling, process modeling, network architecture design, and TELELOGIC®'s DOORS®-like requirements analysis. SA can also be easily customized to meet requirements specific to a particular agency or project or to support additional frameworks. However, SA lacks the capability in network and platform modeling and analysis.
The Air Force uses Network Modeling and Simulation software products, referred to as OPNET, for their network and platform modeling and analysis. OPNET is a product developed by OPNET TECHNOLOGIES®, Inc. for network modeling and simulation. OPNET's technology has been applied extensively to application troubleshooting, simulation and modeling, performance analysis, optimization, and planning for government and defense agencies. OPNET's product MODELER® allows users to design and study communication networks, devices, protocols, and applications with flexibility and scalability. OPNET MODELER® is becoming a standard for network and platform modeling.
Currently data cannot be readily exchanged between different software products, such as SA and OPNET, imposing significant inconvenience and cost to the users. Several commercial tool products provide pieces of an architecture to implement data communication between SA and OPNET. However, these commercial tool products do not adequately communicate well with each other. A more synergistic tool set is needed to exchange data between different software products, such as SA and OPNET.